A Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) lets you invest a fixed amount in a mutual fund every month. Thanks to compounding and rupee-cost averaging (you buy more units when prices are low and fewer when they are high), even small monthly investments can build a sizeable corpus over time. A step-up SIP increases your monthly amount by a chosen percentage each year, which helps your investment keep pace with your rising income.
For a step-up SIP the monthly amount is raised by your chosen percentage at the start of each year, and every instalment then compounds for the rest of the tenure.
Normal SIP: ₹5,000 a month at 12% for 10 years means ₹6,00,000 invested, growing to about ₹11,61,695 (roughly ₹5,61,695 of returns).
Step-up SIP: the same ₹5,000 start with a 10% annual step-up at 12% for 10 years raises your total invested to about ₹9,56,245 and the corpus to about ₹16,87,163 — the yearly increases add nearly ₹5.3 lakh more than a normal SIP.